One of my biggest criticisms of Onimusha: Way of the Sword was its graphics. Although the game uses the RE Engine, it did not take full advantage of its Ray Tracing capabilities. As a result, it looked really flat. But now, a modder has overhauled the game by unlocking Ray Tracing GI and Ray Tracing Ambient Occlusion.

Going into more detail, the Graphics Enhancement Mod unlocks RTGI and RTAO. By default, the game only uses Ray Tracing for reflections. The mod also lets several other settings go beyond the limits of the in-game menu. This includes RT resolution and specular quality. You also get more control over shadows, screen-space effects, and denoising.

The modder has also shared some before-and-after comparison shots. Even though RTGI and RTAO are unofficial, these two RT features can greatly improve image quality. Thanks to them, the lighting feels more natural and grounded. We no longer get the flat look of rasterized lighting. Instead, everything feels like it belongs in the scene. The vanilla shots are on the left, whereas the Ray Tracing shots are on the right.

Now, you may notice that some areas look a bit darker with RTGI and RTAO. As the modder explained, Capcom games with official RTGI support often add extra light sources to each scene. This gives RTGI more light to bounce off and helps it look right.

Onimusha: Way of the Sword was not built with RTGI in mind. Capcom likely knew it would not be included. As a result, some areas have very little light.

The only real fix is to rework these scenes and add new light sources. This is similar to what the modder did with the Onimusha Enhanced Light demo mod and RE4R RE. However, JoHien has not yet decided if he will do the same for this game. It would take a lot of time to do it right.

Despite that, this mod is a must-have in my opinion. It can greatly improve the game’s graphics. Not only that, but it comes with a lot of graphics settings to tweak things. So, if you own a high-end GPU, I suggest trying it. You can go ahead and download it from here.

If you own an NVIDIA RTX 50 series GPU, you may also want to try this DLSS 5 Mod. This mod lets you use DLSS 5 in this game. Furthermore, it includes performance optimizations to run DLSS‑NR at reduced resolution for lower performance cost.

As of now, we don’t know if NVIDIA will work with Capcom to add DLSS 5 support. From what we know, NVIDIA is focused on making DLSS 5 run faster. So, it may take some time before we see official DLSS 5 support in more games. Still, this mod’s trick of running DLSS-NR at a lower resolution is something NVIDIA should look into. It may be one of the best ways to improve DLSS 5 performance.

You can download this DLSS 5 Mod from here.

Enjoy and stay tuned for more!